The Great Box: Learning from the Ancestors

A collaboration with his brother Jaalen Edenshaw, the Great Box Project took the Gwaai and Jaalen to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England to replicate a large nineteenth century cedar bent wood box. Carved around mid-century in Masset, the box embodies the best of Haida box design elements while also exhibiting innovations that mark its creator as an unquestioned master of the art. Gwaai and Jaalen spent a month in the fall of 2014 in a gallery of the museum carving and painting a new box they steamed in Haida Gwaii and had shipped to England.

Having captured all they could, they returned to Haida Gwaii to finish the piece. The replica will be kept in the community in Haida Gwaii for use in feasts and ceremonies.